Contemporary arts: the advent of the projector

Starting in the 1960s, contemporary artists become more and more interested in in the role of computers, media and screens in our society. They employ contemporary image production and diffusion technologies: this is the birth of video art and computer art which, together, fall into what we would now call ‘multimedia arts’. This field encompasses screen-based works (films, videos, sometimes using computer-generated images) as well as a number of installations which, in the beginning, essentially use the cathode screen or monitor.

However, the 1970s do provide certain examples of ‘projection art’, with the use of projectors by Hans-Walter Müller, as well as by the Eventstructure Research Group collective (Amsterdam), in a totally different approach: for the installation entitled Viewpoint, exhibited in Paris in 1975. This work, considered a pioneer of augmented reality, enabled the superimposition of fictitious events on the perception of the actual space, thanks to two automated slide carousels, a retro-reflective screen and an optical visualisation console.

In 1990, the Musée National d’Art Moderne in the Pompidou Centre welcomes the first large-scale international exhibition devoted to contemporary images obtained from photography, cinema and video: Passages de l’image. This exhibition is a chance for French people to discover a wide range of artistic approaches to images at the end of the 20th century, some of which rely on one or more projectors, such as Voices of Reason / Voices of Madness by the Quebecois artist Geneviève Cadieux (1984), for example. From the 1980s onwards, the projector becomes less rare in art video installations. As part of a work on the broadcasting of images in space (relating to video installations in general), the introduction of this part is accompanied by a calling into question of the screen/projector arrangement, a duo previously presumed unbreakable, as the basis for the projected image.

Some examples of works which abandon, or totally ‘forget about’, this pairing include Les Papillons [Ndlt: the butterflies] (1988) by Bertrand Gadenne (artist and teacher at the Regional Fine Arts School in Dunkirk). This involves the aerial projection of a slide, without a screen. The sharpness of the image is adjusted to one metre above the ground: visitors are invited to catch the two butterflies in their hands. Lastly, we should mention the first exhibitions by the New York artist Tony Oursler in France, especially in Paris and Strasbourg between 1985 and 2000, in view of the extent to which his approach would influence a generation of artists (including Yacine Aït Kaci). In the 1990s, Tony Oursler becomes known for his installations composed of chiffon dolls with white heads, onto which expressive faces are projected by video.